


Inappropriate

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:17:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After she is rescued from New Caprica, Laura has a sudden paradigm shift regarding her relationship with the Admiral. Spoilers through end of Season 2. One-shot PWP. </p>
<p>Originally posted at survivalinstinct.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inappropriate

It was, of course, completely inappropriate.   
  
He had done it, he had actually accomplished this impossible rescue of almost half the remaining humans from New Caprica, and now he stood there before them on the flight deck to welcome them triumphantly back aboard the Galactica. He was the man of the hour; hell, he was probably the man of his generation, and she knew that. She  _knew_  that. He deserved more respect than she had to give him, and she had an enormous amount to give. Even the sight of him was filling her with emotions she thought she had forgotten how to feel over the past three weeks, since the Cylons had taken her into custody. Feelings of home, of safety, of overwhelming relief and gratitude...  
  
So why was the first thought that popped into her mind,  _Oh my gods, what is that thing on his lip? That has_ got _to go._  Followed by a mental giggle that was, of course,  _completely_ inappropriate.   
  
The stress of the moment. The aftershock from the adrenaline surge of having been hauled bodily from a Cylon containment cell, ears still ringing from the explosions that brought down the electronics governing the security codes, and tumbled into a heap of fellow humans in the cargo bay of one of the carbon-clad freighters in which the rescuers had arrived. Then the jumps, executed in a series at five-minute intervals, until the fourth brought them here, to Galactica and Pegasus and freedom. Home.   
  
Trying to quell her manic inner giggle, Laura shifted her gaze to the Admiral's eyes, and it was nearly her undoing. For everything she felt, and thought she might burst with feeling, she saw mirrored there. All that, and what she would soon learn was anguish for those not yet saved, for those lost in the course of this day, and for what remained to be done if the rest of humanity was to be brought home as well.   
  
The Admiral was giving a speech - of course - to welcome the passengers aboard. He was also scanning the crowd, though, looking for faces.  _Looking for me?_  She wondered briefly, irrelevantly. And then his eyes caught hers at last, at long last, and his gravely voice ground to a shaky halt, and the Old Man actually stood speechless for what seemed an eternity.   
  
Then, she never knew quite how, the crowd parted, and seemed to propel her gently towards him, and he towards her, murmuring in their wake, a strangely joyful sound, rising to a cheer as they reached one another and flung themselves into the embrace that had been awaiting them so eagerly. Protocol be damned.  
  
 _Home,_  she thought, and she would later recognize the precise moment that their triumphal encounter turned to something else, the second she realized she had simply had quite enough of leaving this man.   
  
And so she pulled back, realigned herself, and kissed him like her life suddenly depended on it, ridiculous moustache and whooping bystanders and all. Why, why had this never seemed possible to her before? It was such an obvious thing to do, to kiss Bill Adama and never stop. And it was a kiss he seemed to expect, what was more. A kiss he had actually seemed equally as inclined to initiate, although its immediacy had perhaps startled him.   
  
A kiss they were sharing on the flight deck, in front of a cramped and exhausted audience of thousands. Completely inappropriate. He was the commanding officer, and she was still the President as far as he was concerned. What's more, she was a schoolteacher, and it wouldn't do to have her necking in front of her students and their parents...  
  
Chagrined, they let one another go, and Laura stifled another giggle that sprang unbidden from some simpler, happier part of her soul and threatened to bring her down entirely. If she laughed she would cry, and then she would never be able to stop crying.  
  
"Bill?" she whispered, just because she needed to feel at least his name on her lips if she couldn't keep kissing him.   
  
He nodded, understanding perfectly, retaining his hold on one of her hands and whispering back, as he turned back to face the crowd, "Later."   
  
Then he raised her hand over their heads in a gesture of victory, and the crowd roared again, and a sweet chaos reigned on the flight deck for many a long moment more.   
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
It was later.   
  
The adrenaline had worn off.   
  
The backlash, despair, had not yet set in.   
  
The briefings and debriefings, which had seemed to last nearly as long as her detainment in the Cylon base camp, had finally reeled to an inconclusive recess. Relieved, feeling like it was all a bit anticlimactic, they had dispersed, resumed their duties; Laura had made her way to the hangar bay, where she helped see to the temporary housing needs of the three thousand refugees who would be remaining on Galactica until a more workable solution was found. Only afterwards had she realized she had no idea where  _she_  would spend her first 'night' off New Caprica. And so she had arrived, as if by chance and expediency only, here in the Admiral's quarters, deemed the only fit place for a former and future head of state. If some took note that the Admiral seemed to make no alternate sleeping arrangements for himself, all were tactful enough to remain silent on the issue - for now, at least.   
  
She had made her way to his home on her own, recalling the way easily enough. Once there, she had shed the rank remains of her clothing. She had partaken of the cautious, bland meal of broth and bread recommended by Dr. Cottle, guaranteed not to shock the stomach after three weeks of near-starvation. She had sucked down glass after glass of water like it was the ambrosia of the gods, until she felt nearly ill. Then, remembering where Bill had been wont to keep his dwindling supply, she had located and knocked back a stiff three fingers of the other kind of ambrosia.  
  
And she had been able to take her first proper shower in over a year. It was the single best hygiene experience of her lifetime, and she did not even particularly care for showers, preferring baths when given a choice. This shower might have made her a convert. Not to mention the factor of just  _whose_  shower she had been using. Whose soap, whose shampoo, whose drab t-shirt and foolishly overlarge drawstring sweatpants she now wore, on whose leather couch surrounded by whose books... his. Bill's. She was wrapped in him, bundled in his clothes and his scents, his  _things_ , and she knew it probably put her at a disadvantage, but was too stunned by the past few days' events to really care. It still all seemed a dream, and if it was  _her_  dream, she would certainly be doing her best to enjoy it. She deserved it, after all, after the straight string of ever-worsening nightmares that had been New Caprica.   
  
"Shell-shocked," a voice rumbled near the hatch, and Laura nearly jumped out of her skin.   
  
"What?"   
  
"You?re shell-shocked," he repeated, pulling the heavy door closed behind him as he entered his quarters. "Did you even realize you were sitting here, crying?" He lifted the still-damp towel from the seat beside her, and dabbed at her wet cheeks.   
  
Lifting her fingers to her face, Laura felt for herself the clear evidence of tears she had failed to notice. "I-"   
  
"It's something we see, here. It'll pass." He handed the towel back to her and sat down, leaning back into the pliant leather of the cushions and clasping his hands over his stomach, reflectively.  
  
"It will? Really?" Laura slumped back beside him in an uncharacteristically relaxed posture.  
  
"No," he admitted after a moment's thought. "It never passes. But eventually you'll snap out of it enough to get back to work. And you won't stare into space and cry quite so much." He sighed deeply, then, a decision-making sigh, and very deliberately lifted his arm and folded it around her to tug her close to his side. She nestled in instantly, far past the point of caring about the thousand reasons to resist. Sitting across from him for hours of meetings, talking to him as if nothing had changed, seeing him across the hangar bay where she worked to bring order to the muddle the refugees had meant for the ship, had been a slow agony of deprivation. It felt too good to be home, suddenly redefined as 'with him,' to quibble about meaningless details like protocol or their history now.   
  
"Thought I'd lost you, Madame President," he said hoarsely, his tone and the strength of his arm around her belying the formality of the title, turning it into the tenderest endearment. His jacket took in her tears, as his sturdy chest absorbed her silent, shuddering sobs; neither knew how much time passed before she mustered the resolve to speak again.  
  
"On the flight deck -"  
  
"I know," he sighed, "I know. We'll pay for it in public opinion, I know. The military and the civilian government shouldn't -"  
  
"Bill," she interrupted, shifting her weight to look at him, placing one slender finger over his lips. "On the flight deck, when I saw you there, that was... the happiest I have ever been to see another person. Ever." She lowered her finger and looked at him intently, with that curious concentration she usually reserved for particularly complex political negotiations.   
  
"Thank you," he replied softly, earnestly, meaning more.   
  
"Is this what we're doing, now" Seriously, Bill, are we doing... this?" She tapped his chest lightly, for emphasis, and he caught her fingers in his and brought them very carefully to his lips for the briefest of moments before surrendering them and looking back at her. He sighed again, his eyes enormous with things he would never, ever, in a million yahrens have enough time to say to her.   
  
Instead, he just nodded, looking strangely grim. But then, he often looked grim.  
  
"I feel like we've missed some steps. Shouldn't we... date? Or something?" Her lips curved up faintly, that ghost of a smile that he had never quite decided on. Was it intentional, or did her mouth just move that way on its own, her lips naturally drawing the eye and teasing the mind with unbidden images of things one really shouldn't think about one's President? Or one's Secretary of Education, or one's teacher, for that matter. A powerful weapon, that expression. And aimed at him, now. So beautiful... and it had been such a very long time.  
  
"I have just two hours and -" He glanced at his watch. "-fourteen minutes before I have to report back to the CIC to relieve Colonel Tigh," he replied pragmatically, massaging the bridge of his nose as he spoke. "We don?t know how many jumps ahead of the Cyclons we are, and they could blow Galactica into oblivion at any second. I think we may have to just let those steps go for now."   
  
"We've wasted too much time already," she agreed, but tried gently to pull away anyway. "But it's crazy, it's just the stress, and the relief talking. Isn't it? We can't just... you should sleep, and I should do something, figure out what to do next, to get -"  
  
He placed a finger over her lips, echoing her earlier gesture. "Laura. Just this once, we're gonna throw caution to the wind, worry about the ramifications later, and realize that this  _is_  what we should be doing next." And he replaced his finger with his lips, capturing her mouth in a sneak attack she fell for all too easily.   
  
"Gods, you're beautiful," drifted across the cabin some time later, followed by, "I've missed you so much."  
  
"You have? You couldn't find another sparring partner?"  
  
"Not with legs like yours."  
  
"Why weren't we doing this before?"  
  
"Probably because you were talking too much..."  
  
She had let her leg creep across his lap until she was half-draped across his body like a teenager after curfew; his fingers had almost immediately started to wander, tracing her calf from ankle to knee, knee to hip, then up to her waist. When he slipped his hand beneath the hem of her shirt - his shirt - and pressed it flat against her back, she drew back just far enough to meet his gaze again. Then slowly, wearing that smile again, she stood up and turned away, walking towards the rack.  
  
The shirt was off before she passed the edge of the couch, and flung back towards Bill, who was still not quite up to speed with her plans. When she untied the drawstring of the sweatpants with a dramatic gesture recognizable even from the back, he finally got the picture and leapt up to follow. He lost one clasp from his uniform jacket in his haste to get it off, and his pants zipper almost defeated him, stunned as he was by the sudden sight of Laura's ass (better than he had ever suspected), and several miles of unbelievable leg (exactly as he had suspected).   
  
By the time he managed to get his pants and shorts off, with only a brief and curse-laden detour to yank off shoes and socks, he felt like a slavering idiot. She had crawled onto the bunk in a manner that could only be described as lascivious, then calmly slid the blanket back before she stretched out on her side to watch him finish undressing. The sight of his former Commander in Chief lying naked and smirking in his bed was distracting and rather surreal, to say the least.  
  
"Quit laughing at me," he demanded, laughing himself at the tangle his pants and shorts had made at his feet.   
  
"It feels so good to laugh," Laura replied, and then tried to cover her eyes as she felt herself tear up again. "I'm sorry... this is ludicrous."  
  
She felt the mattress shift beneath his weight, felt his warmth as he lay down inches away from her and his fingers brushing her damp cheeks.   
  
"Laura? look at me." She did, and her eyes were pools of misery, the horror of experience written there all too clearly. "They didn't..."  
  
"No! No, gods no. But it was bad enough." She sniffled, and then felt awkward all in a rush at the change in tone when they were, after all, still lying in his bed with nothing on. "I had accepted that I was going to die there."  
  
Her stark statement sent a cold chill down his spine, but it was the look in her eyes that tore at his heart; he recognized it, having seen it in his own mirror as recently as the day before, the day when he thought she was gone. Resignation? the end of hope. Wordlessly, he pulled her close, skin on skin feeling more companionable than intimate for the moment, and kissed her on the forehead; it was a blessing, a sanctification, as much as anything else.   
  
Had it not been for the novelty of their situation, they would probably have fallen asleep. They were hardly young, they were exhausted, and it was all such a shift. But their bodies were still too aware, each of the other, of the proximity of warm and unfamiliar flesh. Their minds were too aware of the imminent possibility of death, in the form of as-yet-unseen Cylon raiders who might be targeting the ship at any moment. So slowly, inexorably, their soothing caresses and reassurances began to alter, to revert to form, and by the time their kisses had moved from foreheads, eyebrows, cheeks, noses, and back to lips, the mood had shifted once more.   
  
He nearly stopped to ask her if it was all right, if she was sure, but she anticipated him and stopped him with a kiss that left no doubt of her intentions, although it tabled the issue of her motivation. Bill decided it was too late to care about motivation, and returned the kiss avidly. The strain, the very real fear that this first time might be the last, the pent-up regret over time wasted, all served to heighten things; Bill felt his blood rushing away from his brain with an alacrity he had not enjoyed in two or more decades.  
  
Laura was no better off, growing frantic now with need. She clutched his broad shoulders as he worked his way down her body; his lips found the lively pulse behind her ear, the hollows of her throat, every inch of her breasts, and she dove headfirst with no regrets into the oblivion he offered.  
  
They were on fast-forward, the clock ticking, but he still took his time with her. When he had explored every other interesting possibility her still-lithe body offered, he let himself indulge in a more focused discovery of delights, his every move making it clear that he both enjoyed, and was expert at, this particular pastime. He savored her like a connoisseur, reveling in the sweet and the sour, and in each joyous noise he coaxed from her with fingers and tongue. He utilized all resources available; Laura rethought her position on the moustache issue.  
  
When it came to it, she broke almost at once, the tension too great to resist. But he brought her nearly back to the brink in the space of a few more exhilarating minutes. Once, she opened her eyes long enough to glance down and see him looking back up at her, a calculating gleam in his eyes, and the sudden thought struck her --  _Oh my gods, that's Admiral Adama down there, what the frak are we doing?_  Then a flick of his tongue sent a thrill down to her toes, and she closed her eyes and turned her brain off again. She was so close, so close. Instead of thinking, she arched her back and moaned softly, a much more rewarding response for both of them. She felt his chuckle as a vibration, and felt she would have gladly paid money to make herself his laughingstock for all time.   
  
And then he was face-to-face with her again, and her hands were on him, and the moment of no return flitted by them without so much as a questioning glance. They moved together as though it were fated, which Laura found ridiculous but undeniable all the same. No adjustment period, no awkward shifting or tugging or "Could you just...," "You're on my..." They were already there, already in tune, and the rightness of it swiftly sent her over the edge a second time. She wrapped herself around him as she climaxed hard, drawing him closer, deeper, trying to lose herself in him. She saw stars, and laughed at how trite, but could not stop her tears from falling yet again. This time, with gratitude, relief and joy, and Bill seemed to sense that. He smiled -- _It's Bill up there, in there, did I always love that smile? We're naked, we're having sex, gods he feels good, I cannot believe this is happening, I never want to leave this spot again --_ and kissed the tears away patiently. Detoured, kissed a few other things, moving inside her very slowly now, as if there were all the time in the universe.   
  
When her senses returned, she thought she would prefer to see a little loss of control, a little less smugness, and she raked her nails lightly down his broad back just to see him squirm a bit. Then, with a skill level hinting at more practice than she would ever admit to, she levered him up and over with one arm and leg, flipping them neatly. Well, he was hardly resisting, of course.  
  
He tried to set the pace again once she settled on top of him, but she held him off firmly, with a smug grin that clearly trumped his own. She sat very still, knees locked at his hips, and considered her options. The chest? Her hands moved in tandem to test the textures there, smooth skin in firm, warm planes under slightly more hair than anticipated. But not unattractively hairy, just... cute, she decided. And then decided to test his reaction to this assessment.   
  
"Admiral William Adama," she began in her most crisp, pedantic tone, "your chest is sort of... fluffy."  
  
He stared at her in frank disbelief, eyes wide like a very startled deep blue sea. Shook his head, flexed his hips into hers, and hissed as her fingernails scritched lightly over his nipples.  
  
"It's cute," she stated, then worked her nails down through the cuteness, to where the fluff tapered into a trail straight to their junction. Then behind her, down his thighs and up again, causing his legs to move restlessly.   
  
She toyed a bit more - learning the lay of the land - and then remembered her purpose and began moving again with deliberation, making each stroke count and watching him keenly. She wanted to catalogue his every expression, all these new faces she hadn't seen before. The moustache lent a patina of unfamiliarity, but it was all Bill underneath, more Bill than ever. How could she ever sit through a meeting with him again without wishing she were seeing  _this_  on his stern admiral-face?  
  
He cried out an encouragement, her name, and she knew it was nearly the end. Giving in to the inevitable, she ceded control, let him dictate their tempo, until he came in a rush, with a rough gasp and his fingers too tight on her hips. She didn't mind, would welcome the set of faint bruises if only there were a tomorrow in which to tease him about them. Convince him, perhaps, to make loving amends. She lay on his chest and listened to his heart, and felt complete.


End file.
